Former Royal New Zealand Ballet dancer wins $25,000

Former Royal New Zealand Ballet dancer wins
$25,000 arts awardNew
Plymouth born Cameron McMillan, who began his career with
the Royal New Zealand Ballet for four years, was last night
awarded one of three $25,000 New Generation Awards by the
Arts Foundation of New Zealand.

“We are delighted that
Cameron’s talent both as a dancer and choreographer has
been acknowledged through this prestigious award. He was one
of the stars at the RNZB and we’ve enjoyed working with
him recently as a choreographer during the hugely popular
Stravinsky Selection triple bill. I was at the
ceremony last night and it was wonderful to catch up with
Cameron and congratulate him in person,” says Amanda
Skoog, Managing Director, RNZB.

The Award acknowledges
artists who have assured potential and show outstanding
promise. Recently described by The Observer UK, as ‘one of
the most compelling and intelligent dancers on the world
stage’, Cameron is based in London and is an independent
choreographer, dancer and teacher.

He left NZ in 2001 to
dance with English National Ballet and later joined the
Rambert Dance Company. He is now an associate artist with
DanceEast (the National Dance Agency of the east of England)
and has enjoyed a highly successful performance and creative
career spanning large-scale classical ballet independent
contemporary dance, film and fashion.

During his time at
the Royal New Zealand Ballet, Cameron quickly rose to the
rank of principal dancer and performed many leading roles
including Prince Desire in The Sleeping Beauty, James
in La Sylphide, Jonathan Harker in Dracula and
creating the title role in Russell Kerr’s Peter
Pan. He also danced key roles in shorter contemporary
works by Douglas Wright and Michael Parmenter among others.
In 2008 he returned to the company as a guest artist to
dance the role of Romeo in Romeo and Juliet.

While
with the RNZB he also showed great promise as a young
choreographer during the company’s choreographic
workshops. In 1999 he created his first work
Unsuspecting View, which the RNZB toured nationally
in 2001. In 2007 the RNZB commissioned his acclaimed
Equilibrium for performances in New Zealand and
Australia. In 2011 he returned to the company to create a
new work Satisfied with Great Success, which featured
designs by acclaimed fashion designer Karen Walker, and
premiere as part of in the triple bill Stravinsky
Selection.ENDS

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